Exophonic Poetry Reading

In this session, four poets for whom a writing language isn't a native language, but a second, third, or fourth language, will read from their most recent manuscripts-in-progress. These poems, though primarily in English, work with other languages through multilingual poetics and self-translation. For three poets in this reading, the self is brought into English by way of German, Spanish, and Persian, but for one poet, Creole comes into focus, so as to assert itself over the native tongue. Before the reading, each poet will take a few minutes to talk about their writing processes, which, we hope gives the audience an understanding of how one's other language(s) inform and determine one's form, voice, and diction.